Chris Bachelder

What a delightful journey this novel took me on!

It was like a room with many doors, the doors leading to more rooms with more doors, and yet taking one back to where one started. The narrative segues into asides, sharing the stories of Melville admirers and biographers. One such tangent is about Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick, which is also a story about marriage.

Hardwick wrote that Melville was “given to violence in the household,” based on family stories and letters. After his show more death, his wife promoted his work and pressed for reissuing of the books, which fed a consequent “Melville Revival.”

We realize how elusive Melville is–can we really know him? Even his New York Times death notice called him “Hiram Melville,” and he was “Norman Melville” on a crew list.

His Moby Dick is extolled as an eloquent masterpiece, inspirational, life-changing. “How much that man makes you love him!” (Hart Crane) “Herman Melville is a god.” (Maurice Sendak) And by others, particularly high school students, as a big snooze.

The story is set during the pandemic, with a woman researching Melville and discussing her findings with her husband.

There is much about Melville’s love for Nathaniel Hawthorne, famed for his beauty, his visits documented by Sarah Peabody Hawthorne, who noted his linen was dirty, and their son Julian, who loved Melville.

Melville’s early novels sold well, but his long poem Clarel and Moby Dick were failures. He worked for nineteen years as a customs inspector.

The first Melville I read was a volume that included Typee and Omoo that I found on my father’s bookshelf when I was a teen. I read Moby Dick as a young woman–skipping the Cetacea and whaling chapters, and then finally read it in whole it in middle age when our son read it in high school. In between, I read Billy Bud and The Confidence Man and Bartleby the Scrivener.

I was charmed when the narrator describes reading an old paperback of Howard’s End–the exact edition I discovered and read and fell in love with. I recalled reading Lowell’s Life Studies and Day by Day and Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights, sad that my copies were sacrificed in one of my dozen moves. But I have Moby Dick still, and this has inspired me to revisit it, to see how I experience it in my senior years.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. show less

Read this book after it made the short list for Tournament of Books (Rooster) 2017 playoff. Published 2016, the story is about a bunch of older men who get together once a year to reenact the Throwback Special, a play in which Joe Theisman suffers a career ending compound fracture November 18, 1985. The author is Chris Bachelder, born in Minnesota and teaching in Ohio and this is not his first book. It is the first book I've read by this author. It's a bit of history of Monday night football show more and can be a walk down memory lane for football fans. It is an interesting tale of these 22 men who we get to know for this brief weekend and it covers male friendship and masculinity with humor and mostly good taste. Its not just about this one football game, it's more about each of these guys as they come together for this weekend. Some of the social aspects covered include fatherhood, work/business, the one man who is black deals with the issues of the possibility of a black man playing the role of black person (Lawrence Taylor), another who is thinking about his dad telling him that "people notice a job done well but in Robert's experience that had not been true, what people notice was tardiness, failure and moth damage." and Jeff's inner dialogue about marriage and that marriage is really about having someone in your life to watch you, to witness your life." And Charles who is thinks about things ending while they are starting.

So the essence of the book is a story of men's inner life and somewhat also the external life men share with each other or of men's ways of relating. The characters were interesting. The reader is slowly introduced to the 22 guys as they arrive but various pieces are added as you go along but never a complete picture of any one character. I found this to be very effective character development. I think the author meant us to get these bits and pieces of each man's thoughts and life and for the reader to fill in the blanks. It was readable. The story was in sections with chapters within the sections; As far as cover and book, it was not anything more than a green cover with the title and author name trying to give the feeling of movement. I felt that the author did achieve what he set out to tell in this story. It is an act of communion. They eat together, share rooms. The weather is rainy and uninviting. It is quest of a sorts, a voyage and return and even rebirth. I thought the book was well written, the author used a creative way to tell a story about masculinity and men's lives. show less

I have not read Moby Dick, but this book almost makes me want to….I loved this clever, unique look at literary research and academia, and how a passion project can become an obsession - or at least infuse every aspect of life. The narrator is researching Melville and creates a found narrative out of all the snippets of her research - quotes from myriad sources on his life, his work, other’s opinions of his work, adjacent history and writers - especially Hawthorne. She weaves this all show more together into a story of her own - pandemic lockdown - her daughters are Zooming in to school, her husband, also an academic, is reading, writing, putzing, and she has the time and leisure to take a deep dive into her subject - my favorite is how she will read him little bits in bed, over meals, in the course of the day, as if they are both on a treasure hunt and sharing the clues. There is wry humor - a must when encountering Melville - and through learning more about his wife Lizzie and her role in his life, a reflection back on her own marriage. A tangential thread is how women fit into the arts - as muse, as helpmeet, as threat (?). The authors, a couple themselves, totally capture the rabbit hole nature of learning about topics that pique one’s interest. For example, the narrator has a sidebar about whales - the only other species that goes through menopause, which coincidentally is her own current lot in life. So well crafted - but I’m trying to decide if it would appeal to someone who isn’t an English major. From the book jacket: “Absorbing, charming, and intimate, Dayswork considers the blurry lines between life and literature, the slippage between what happens and what gets recorded, and the ways we locate ourselves in the lives of others.” show less

The first part - which is the bulk of the book - is hilarious but also at times heart-wrenching. Five stars all the way for this section, partly because I love the variety of format - narrative interspaced with interviews, book reviews, song lyrics, phone call transcriptions… I love that kind of thing. There wasn’t much to any overall tension to this part of the book because of that and the fact that there’s no real plot line we are following. I loved reading it but if I set it down, I show more didn’t have a burning desire to pick it back up to see what happens next. But I consider that a trade off for the multi-format thing so no dings for it. Plus, I enjoyed it so much while I was reading it, I didn’t need the “what’s next?” question in my mind for me to pick it back up.

The last 100 pages, which make up Part Two, are all narrative and have a definite plot so the tension ramps up a bit but the humor is unfortunately gone. Yes, it is still very satirical but it becomes sad instead of funny. Or perhaps pitiable. Still very good, interesting, and well-written but without the same spark that made the first part so special. Half a star off for that since I wasn’t able to finish the book with the feeling of “that was amazing” that I held during Part One.

Ultimately though, this book cements the fact that I will be reading Bachelder again. show less